Performance Management

It is important for managers to get their employees to reach performance levels that the organization considers desirable. How do managers ensure that employees are performing as well as they are supposed to? In organizations, the formal means of assessing the work of employees is through a systematic performance appraisal process.

What is performance management system?

Performance management system: A process of establishing performance standards and evaluating performance in order to arrive at objective human resource decisions and to provide documentation to support personal actions.

But how do you evaluate in employee’s performance? That is, what are the specific techniques or appraisal? We list the in exhibit below.

Exhibit Performance appraisal Methods>>>

Written: Simple to use: More a measure of evaluator’s writing ability than of employee’s actual performance.

Multi-person: Compares employees with one another: Unwieldy with large number of employees

MBO: Focuses on end goals; results oriented: Time consuming.

3600 appraisal: More thorough; time consuming

The written essay requires no complex forms or extensive training to complete. However, a good or bad appraisal may be determined as much by the evaluator’s writing skill as by the employee’s actual level of performance. The user of critical incidents focuses the evaluator’s attention on those critical or key behaviors that separate effective whatever the employee did that was especially effective or ineffective. The key here is that only specific popular methods of appraisal is by adjective rating scales. This method lists a set of performance factors such as quantity and quality of work, job knowledge, cooperation, loyalty, attendance, honesty and initiative. The evaluator then goes down the list and rates each factor on an incremental scale. An approach that has received renewed attention involves behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS). These scales combine major elements from the critical incident and graphic rating scale approaches. The appraiser rates an employee according to items along a numerical scale, but the items are examples of actual behavior on a given job rather than a general description or traits.

360-degree appraisal: An appraisal device that seeks feedback from a variety of sources for the person being rated.

Finally an appraisal device that seeks performance feedback from such sources as the person being rated, bosses, peers, team members, customers, customers, and suppliers has become popular in organization. It’s called the 360 degree appraisal. In India, it is extensively used by well known organizations like Hughes Software systems, ITC, Wipro, Escotel, Godrej Industries and Mahindra & Mahindra to name a few.

In today’s dynamic organizations, traditional performance evaluation systems may be archaic. Downsizing has given supervisors greater responsibility and more employees who report directly. Accordingly in some instances, it is almost impossible for supervisors to have extensive job knowledge of each of their employees. Furthermore the growth of project teams and employee involvement in today’s companies places the responsibility of evaluation at points at which people are better able to make accurate assessments.

The 360 degree feedback process also has some positive benefits for development concerns. Many managers simply do not know how their employees view them and the work they have done. Research studies into the effectiveness of 360 degree performance appraisals are reporting positive results from more accurate feedback, empowering employees, reducing the subjective factors in the evaluation process, and developing leadership in an organization.
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